Angelo Excerpt

This is an excerpt from "Scared Children With Cars."

            The ice cold water soothed him a little, and at least made his feel like he could breathe again.  He no longer felt like he was overheating, although his chest and back and arms began to itch, and he had no doubt that there was a large red rash spreading.  He pretended not to notice and once again, began to jog on the machine.  This time, to distract himself, he turned on the TV.  There was an old high school football game on, but that was the last thing he wanted to think about right now.  He flipped through the channels casually, forgetting about the dying old man outside and his job and his home and all of his problems that seemed so inescapable at that moment.  Then he turned the channel one too many times and he saw it.  There it was: the exact giant from his dream.  It was walking across the desert and resting down beneath a tree, arms wide apart as it sat, exactly like the coach’s dream.  Angelo fell off the back of his treadmill and went somersaulting backwards into the wall.  A couple of people looked over at him, but he jumped right back up and insisted that he was fine, refusing any help or attention. 

            He looked back up at the TV and there it was, eyeless, mouthless, featureless, pure white, gigantic, with huge arms and legs, and smooth skin pulled over its sinew, like icing on a cake: perfect, seamless, hairless.  He gawked and his mouth hung open, terrified like he was seeing the devil for the first time, and for the first time believing in hell.  He turned the TV off and stared at the blue screen.  He walked over to the locker room to get his things, the words “you know that’s what you saw” repeating over and over furiously in his head, like a recording of a madman repeating his insane mantra.  And so “you know what you saw” became Angelo’s mantra: his torturous mantra that could not be silenced nor reasoned with.  He gripped his gym bag with a pearl white fist and refused to put on his winter coat. 

            As he walked down the stairs, he attempted to appear calm and normal.  Ignoring the voice echoing through his mind.  The glass door opened and then he saw the mob of people, an ambulance, and an old man in a gurney being lifted into the deathtrap.  Angelo roared at the top of his lungs, up at the sky, with his head thrown back and his arms out, fists clenched, palms up, elbows bent, like a man who was starting a brawl with heaven.  He ran as fast as he could to his car, somehow never losing his footing.  The doors were unlocked and he jumped in and sped away, “you know what you saw…you know what you saw…you know what you saw…you know what you saw…you know what you saw…you know what you saw…”